Brenda Shaughnessy is the author of So Much Synth (Copper Canyon Press, 2016); Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press 2012), which was a finalist for the Griffin International Poetry Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Award; Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets; and Interior with Sudden Joy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999), which was nominated for the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry, a Lambda Literary Award, and the Norma Farber First Book Award.

The author of seven books of poetry including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, Blood Dazzler, and most recently Incendiary Art, a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow, and the most successful National Poetry Slam champion in the competition’s history, Patricia Smith has been lauded by critics as “a testament to the power of words to change lives.” Providing poetry lovers with a bridge between the stage and page, Smith is a poet, performer, and educator who continues to make an indelible mark in the landscape of American poetry and in the lives of poets everywhere.

American Book Award winner Camille Dungy considers five important poems by Phillis Wheatley, Lucille Clifton, Maggie Smith, Craig Santos Perez, and Sterling A. Brown that reveal what it means to be at home in America. What are the ways poets utilize line, image, language, and sound to explore the concept of home?

National Book Award finalist Monica Youn discusses the history of poetry through the lens of the sonnet.

30 Years! A History of Poetry in 30 Poems
Poets House invites you to celebrate our 30th Anniversary with an exploration of 30 poems that have left an indelible mark on the history of poetry: six programs presented over the course of the year featuring five poets, each of whom will discuss five enduring, necessary poems.

In celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Poets House, 30 Years! A Narrative in 30 Objects mines the Poets House archives for objects of resonance, including handwritten correspondence between e. e. cummings and Elizabeth Kray; typescripts from Stanley Kunitz and Galway Kinnell; paintings, photographs, journals, and recordings; and much more.

Join poets Jennifer Michael Hecht, Owen Lewis, Fran Quinn, Jason Schneiderman, Cecilia Woloch, and friends to honor the work of James Tolan (1964–2017), a beloved member of the Poets House community and long-time professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College. We gather to celebrate Jim’s artistry, wisdom, and grit on the occasion of the release of his posthumous collection of poetry, Filched.

“What is it I’m turning toward in turning toward you?” Julie Carr, Mónica de la Torre, and Anna Moschovakis discuss intimacy, feminism, and the act of confession in epistolary poetry from Lorine Niedecker, Jack Spicer, Bernadette Mayer, Mark McMorris, and others. Audience members will be invited to write “letters” as a form of response to the panelists and then to read them aloud, initiating dialogue.

Poet Cedar Sigo presents a new book he edited: There You Are: Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera, a collection of 40 years of interviews, letters, poems, and journals from the remarkable poet Joanne Kyger. He'll pay tribute to his mentor and friend, while also sharing photos and images from Kyger's archive.

There will also be a showing of Kyger's 1968 video, "Descartes," shown courtesy of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.